


Inside the Defenses

by DragoJustine



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, reference to addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-10
Updated: 2009-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragoJustine/pseuds/DragoJustine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack didn't really quit smoking, as such. In his life, he'd detoxed twice that deserved the word -- honest to god stinking sweat and shaking hands -- and ditching the cancer sticks didn't rate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inside the Defenses

Jack didn't really quit smoking, as such. In his life, he'd detoxed twice that deserved the word -- honest to god stinking sweat and shaking hands -- and ditching the cancer sticks didn't rate.

( _Jack didn't believe that "once an addict, always an addict" line for a minute. In fact, he thought at least eight of the twelve steps were complete and total crap, mostly the ones about a higher power. He'd never been honest enough with himself to acknowledge the higher powers that got him out each of those jams: The Air Force. His need to be a father to his son. The realization that somewhere up there, Daniel was still alive and watching, and he had damn well better deserve it._ ) 

But he got back from Abydos and did a lot of things. Gave his last bottle of Scotch to Mike from poker nights as a housewarming present. Stretched his pack of smokes out for a week and then didn't buy another. Locked his personal weapon in a drawer and never again pulled it out to turn it over and over in his hands late at night and contemplate ways out. Said a last goodbye to Sara ( _asked her for that picture, the one of the three of them at one of Charlie's first ball games that Charlie had signed across the front like a bigshot star giving them his autograph, and left without another word when she handed it to him, stumbling blindly for the door so she wouldn't see his tears_ ). 

Yeah, quitting the cigarettes didn't rate.

He spent a lot of time on the roof with his telescope, those two years. He got to know every bright spot in the Northern sky, and when he was done mapping them through a cycle of the seasons, he even thought very briefly about moving to Australia. The Southern sky would be interesting, and he could find a place with a lot less light pollution. He could probably find good fishing somewhere. And down there, if he bought a stronger lens, he would be able to see Abydos' star.

It was only an idle thought; even though he knew he would never see it again, it was still somehow more important to stay near the gate. 

***

Jack kept it together for about a week. A week of "Oh God, what can of worms have we opened," of sleep deprivation and alarm klaxons and the gut-wrenching knowledge that they were being plunged into a war entirely outside their ken.

But seven days after it all started, Charlie Kowalski lay dead on the gate ramp missing half his head. Jack got into the elevator the minute Hammond dismissed him and punched the surface button with a blind need to be out and gone.

Up on the surface in Norad ops, Jack set about bumming a cigarette with the kind of single-minded focus he normally reserved for hostile contact. He worked through three airmen, two lieutenants, and five sergeants before he scored in the maintenance bay of the motor pool. Apparently, military men just didn't smoke the way they used to. 

He staked out a cement ledge for himself and lit up. His hands weren't shaking (his hands never shook) but his body was going nuts from adrenaline without a target and emotions yanked around like a sadistic game of crack the whip. More than two years since he'd retired, and he'd done it mostly so he'd never watch somebody under his command (somebody _his responsibility_ ) die again. And if this could happen to Kowalski ( _good man, good soldier, always did what he thought was right, knew how to handle himself, nobody a commander had to worry about, stepped back through that gate feeling normal, nobody even saw when that thing took him_ )--

Daniel found him, wandered up with a sort of pathetic attempt at studied nonchalance. Jack wanted to snap, say something cutting about privacy, because didn’t Daniel realize that he was the last person ( _his responsibility_ ) Jack wanted to see right now? 

Then he looked again. Daniel was hunched over into himself, shoulders up around his ears ( _and Kowalski knew how to handle himself_ ). He was still wearing Jack's brown suede jacket, at least three sizes too big for him, over the thin black t-shirt and BDU pants that might be, Jack realized with a shock, the only clothes he actually owned. 

Daniel had watched the operation with a fierce, desperate intensity, like a drowning man watching the lifeline coming; Jack had lost a man today, but Daniel had lost a hope. Jack wanted to hate him, just a little, for caring about that more than about Kowalski. Instead, he just scooted wordlessly to the downwind end of his ledge.

Daniel didn't try to make small talk. Jack finished his cigarette, and stared at his hands, and was at a loss. Daniel was sitting six inches away, just in the corner of his eye, and Jack became acutely conscious of their positions, hunched over with elbows on knees, and wondered who had mirrored who. Daniel finally cleared his throat a little and said, "I was thinking about maybe getting drunk." 

"Nothing but beer at my place," Jack said, and was shocked to realize he wanted to bring Daniel home. Not just that Daniel was the only person he could stand to be around right now, but that he wanted Daniel there, that now that he thought of it he couldn't stand the idea of letting Daniel out of his sight tonight. "But then, it apparently only takes you two beers, so I figure we're good." 

"Cheap date," Daniel answered with the wry twist to his voice that Jack was already learning to crave. Disarming honesty, garnish with black humor, serve hot. Somehow, after a grand total of maybe ten days of acquaintanceship, a new constant in Jack's life.

***

Daniel had been back for a week, still stumbling around the base in a distracted haze and burying himself in old paperwork to jog memories, when he knocked on Jack's office door.

"Yup," Jack called, and Daniel walked in, all purposeful casualness, hands shoved deep in his pockets. 

"Hey, Jack," he said, wandering two steps forward. He pulled one hand out of his pocket and traced his fingertips lightly over the wood grain of Jack's desk. The gesture was unconscious, Daniel trying to feel his way into this conversation the same way he stroked his hands across old carvings, the same way he was navigating back into his life. Unconscious and oddly sensual, and Jack's chest went drum-tight for a heartbeat.

"How goes the remembering?"

"Well. Really well. I think I've earned a break. You want pizza tonight, maybe? It's hockey season. I remembered that."

"You didn't remember that," Jack said, accusing. "You never knew it in the first place." 

"No," Daniel said, and shrugged. "But I remembered enough to know to look it up." 

"Point to you." 

Daniel's fingertips hovered above Jack's paperwork, awkwardly still, while an entire equation of uncertainty flitted across his face: how much casual familiarity he could count on, whether he was right in whatever he thought he remembered, how desperately he wanted something still un-named. Daniel had always worn everything on his face, at least for Jack, even after he learned to shutter himself away around Pentagon brass and alien negotiators. Jack had been as deep inside Daniel's defenses as vice-versa, and the idea that that was still true soothed all the sting of Daniel's awkwardness. 

He dug back down into his pocket and dropped something on Jack's desk that almost, for a split-second, looked like a deck of playing cards. Then it resolved itself: red and white box, cellophane wrap.

"For you," Daniel said. "I had to stop for gas this morning. That's your brand, right?" and Jesus, Daniel sounded _proud_ of himself for remembering that. He was leaning, hip cocked against Jack's file drawers, already moving on: "So, I was reading about a mission to P3X--"

Jack stared in numb shock. It didn't even make sense; to the extent that Jack had had a preferred brand -- base in the middle of nowhere and a badly stocked PX never made for a lot of selection -- it hadn't been Marlboro. Then he remembered. 

Skaara holding his lighter, flame reflecting in his eyes and face growing wide with wonder; that slim brown hand creeping across his pack to that red and white box, tentative and brave and cautious and determined. Skaara had settled back in his seat, all wide-legged and self-important and adult, watching Jack out of the corner of his eye, flicking ash in exact imitation of Jack's own hands. Jack remembered ( _He wants to be like you. He wants to be just like you_ , like a kick to the gut, a second go-round of the most wonderful and most horrible sensation he'd ever experienced) the way he'd chased Skaara off from his weapon in a sudden, heart-stopping panic. 

He'd told Daniel that story after the Triad, and they'd both laughed at the image of Skaara finally inhaling, squawking indignantly and flinging the cigarette away like it had bit him. 

"I have to go," Jack said, cutting Daniel off mid-sentence, because Christ. Even amnesiac, Daniel still held all his secrets.

***

Daniel showed up that evening, hunched and miserable on the doorstep, and just said, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Jack said, and gestured him in. "Me too." 

He took the two steps down into the living room warily, and Jack found himself looking with strange eyes, trying to remember all the changes he'd made in the last year, wondering what was remembered and what was brand new. When Daniel saw the open pack and the ash tray on the end table, his eyes flicked back fast to Jack.

"Well, you weren't supposed to start again," Daniel said, voice suspended between mock reprimand and actual guilt.

"You gave them to me." 

Daniel blinked and Jack flinched away fast, turning to the fridge, because that was a little more bare than he had intended his soul to be tonight. But when he got back with the beers Daniel had taken his seat, left side of the couch, the place that had been his since Jack moved here. Jack found himself thinking vague, distracted thoughts about conditioning and patterns and subconscious cues. What was it, in the room or in his mind, that told Daniel where to sit? 

"I bought them for you because I remembered the image of you smoking. And because I remembered snatches of a conversation about it. I remember more of that conversation now; you said that it was unfortunate that I first met you during your imitating-a-chimney phase. I said my sinuses thanked you for stopping. You said if it was a choice between you blowing smoke all over me or me sneezing all over you..." Daniel trailed off and popped the cap of his beer.

"At least I could quit," Jack finished. He hoped like hell Daniel remembered the rest of that conversation, because he hoped like hell Daniel remembered everything, but he was terrified of it, as well. ( _Nothing like digging up buried memories, to see things fresh. Nothing like seeing events fresh, to spot the patterns and uncover the secrets._ )

Daniel pointed his bottle accusingly. "Which is about a half a step over from 'I may be fat, but you're ugly.'"

"The classics are versatile."

"I told you about how Skaara tried to teach me the new year dance, and Sha're kept sneaking up to whisper about other kinds of dancing we could do until Skaara chased her out with the spar from a mastadge harness." 

"Yeah," Jack said. "I remember." 

He did. He remembered Daniel moving one arm across his face in a sketch of a dance last done under a desert moon. He remembered Daniel telling it and laughing, a genuine, beautiful laugh utterly without sadness or regret, gorgeous in the way that Daniel sometimes was when he forgot to be closed-off and alone. Jack had stared, dumbstruck with awe and love, and Daniel had glanced over and caught his gaze with a puzzled frown and the first signs of dawning comprehension, and Jack had jumped up to go putter in the kitchen (thinking _oh shit oh shit oh shit_ ).

He had no idea what Daniel wanted from him here.

"I remember big things," Daniel said. "Gate addresses and artifacts and all my academic work. World-saving things. But this stuff is important too, and I-- I half-remember, or I misremember, or I remember and misinterpret. And if I get it wrong, I won't be your friend. I'll just be that guy you resent because he looks like your friend used to look."

"No." Jack was out of his seat before he thought, out of his seat and half way across the room. "No. Not gonna happen." 

He was half way across the room and realized he had no idea what he would do when he got over there, but Daniel stood up to meet him. 

"The end of that conversation-- I remember it, or I made it up out of wishful thinking. Or I remember and am misinterpreting, out of wishful thinking. I can't keep acting on things and getting them wrong. I can't." 

"You're not wrong," Jack said, and closed the last step between them.

***

Daniel seemed self-conscious about the cuddling, afterwards. He lay sweating and draped over Jack, pressing for every inch of skin contact possible while his heartbeat slowly came down, but when he had stopped gasping and shaking he jerked away a little with a guilty, regretful flinch.

Jack hauled him back, face to face on their sides, entangled. Daniel ran hot and craved warmth, hauling the covers over them even while he radiated like a furnace, and Jack felt limp and groggy and lazy with heat. He reached out to drag a hand down Daniel's side, a long slick slide over shoulder and ribs and hip, and felt a sudden dread settle down over him.

He knew this feeling. 

It was a little like the dull realization he felt when he first caught himself watching the clock, calculating minutes until another dose. A lot like the resigned dread of pouring the last of his liquor down the drain and thinking, "well, this is going to suck." Related to the panic at realizing the alien light had caught him in its snare as well. 

He'd almost lost Daniel so many times now that he'd lost count (except he hadn't-- he remembered every single _no, just got him back, how did he manage to kill himself this time, not again not again not again_ ). Losing Daniel got worse every time. Last time nearly did him in. Now that he had this...

Jack cupped Daniel's jaw in his hand and touched their lips together. He felt it as Daniel started to surface from his doze, felt the flicker of eyelashes and shift of jaw and slight change in breathing, felt it when the lip touch turned into a kiss. Daniel made a noise, very soft and deep in his throat. In the stifling heat beneath the blankets the whole length of his body uncoiled, flexed, nestled itself millimeters closer to Jack. A single prickle of sweat emerged at his temple and touched the tip of Jack's second finger.

He was drowning in it, washed away in a tide-- Daniel's sweat-damp skin, moist lips, warm skin, moving jaw, the rich, musky intense smell of him.

Jack pulled back and whispered, hoarse and overwhelmed. "I can't lose this. I can't lose you again. I can't." 

"What was that for?" Daniel asked, slurred.

( _Some withdrawal kills._ )

"Go back to sleep."

Daniel turned and murmured and twitched, falling into heavy, trusting oblivion. Jack didn't try to disentangle or shift the blanket off himself, not yet. Instead he just lay there, marveling in the precious, living body cradled in his arms.

( _This is an addiction I can live with._ )


End file.
